Do animals have a Theory of Mind? Flashcards
example of social learning in pigeons
The pigeons are set up as shown, the bird on the left is the “Sender”, that on the right the “Receiver”. The Sender can see two lights that cannot be directly viewed by the Receiver, the Receiver can, however, see the Sender. The Receiver has two response keys, Left Hand (LH) and Right Hand (RH) to peck, and once again the Sender cannot directly view these keys. The contingencies in play are such that the Sender and Receiver both get rewarded if the Receiver pecks RH when the green light is on and LH when the red light is on. Can they communicate to solve this problem? The answer is that they can solve the problem after a lot of training on it, but it’s not quite what most people would mean by “communication”.
example of monkey vicarious conditioning
- e.g. fear of snakes in monkeys
- based on CC
- naïve monkey doesn’t fear snake
- sees fear reaction in other monkey when snake present
- fear of snakes conditioned
- may be particularly important in phobias
what is enhancement
• demonstrator’s behaviour draws observer’s attention to location or stimulus
example of enhancement
e.g. blue tits and milk
- Other blue tits will see this behaviour of pecking milk
- Chance of others picking at milk top greatly increases
- This reinforces the behaviour
what is imitaiton
when enhancement and observational conditioning can’t explain new behaviour
example of imitation
- “Two-Action Test”- given a reward no matter what behaviour it does
- with quail (+), rats (+), budgerigars (+), pigeons (+)
- BUT: never a new behaviour?
what was Heyes et al sutdy 1999
Heyes and colleagues (1990, 1992, 1999) have looked at imitation in the rat. The response used was pushing a hanging joystick either to the left or right (so not a typical rat behavior, and the bi-directional nature of the response controls for effects of enhancement, cf. Grindley’s demonstration of instrumental learning in the guinea pig). Rats observed a demonstrator rat e.g. pushing the joystick to the demonstrator’s right, then were transferred to the demonstrator chamber and reinforced for pushing in either direction. They preferentially pushed in the same direction as the demonstrator - imitation?
example of imitaiton in primates
• potato washing in Japanese macaques:
o spreading in population too slow to be imitation (stimulus enhancement)
• Anecdotal evidence - problem of anthropomorphising
• Conclusion - evidence for true imitation at present inconclusive
what is teaching
An intentional facilitation of learning, with costs for the teacher
what is not an example of teaching
• Flavour preferences in rats or mobbing in birds are not examples of teaching
examples of referential communication
• releaser/FAP communication: no decision, direct instruction to the receiver
• referential communication: messages give varied information about matters external to sender and receiver
o vervet alarm calls
o other primate species
o The “dance language” of honey bees is referential
who did Terrace et al train
Nim
example of animals learning language
evidence such as Washoe’s famous “water bird” example. But it’s not particularly impressive when you realise that Washoe is looking at both a bird and water, and is signing both terms over a period of time. See Terrace et al (1979) in Science for more on this (the Nim project – which I consider next).
Story of Terrace and Nim
Terrace was originally convinced that Nim could form sentences – i.e. “More banana” would be signed rather than “Banana more”.
But then he spotted something: Nim was using the signs provided by his tutors to produce his signs –he was effectively copying them or responding to them – but at such a short lag that they didn’t notice. You could only spot it on film.
His conclusion ultimately was that Nim did not acquire language. He was smart, he was fast, but he did not communicate in the way that humans can. He didn’t really generate his own sentences. He was simply good at producing responses that achieved the goal of getting food.
Terrace took a lot of flak for this conclusion and for this experimental work. There’s a recent documentary “Nim” which portrays him in an unflattering light. He stands by his conclusions, and feels that his portrayal in this documentary is unfair.
what is tactical deception
Dishonest signals might derive from operant conditioning
Anecdotes of primate dishonesty
Deception and intention
Understanding the intentions of the individual to be deceived
some kind of Theory of Mind…
